I have traveled through time, who am I afraid of?

Chapter 1198 A life of drinking, gambling, and womanizing makes it hard to return home.

Du Feng stepped forward and, after trying only the second key, opened the large brass lock hanging on the iron chain.

Du Feng forcefully pushed the two iron gates to the sides, and the opening was wide open!

"Your Highness, Prince Yu, Princess, please!"

Du Feng stepped back to the door and gestured towards the cave.

Crown Prince Xiao Jingye, Leng Rongyue, and Xiao Jingyu walked directly into the stone cave, with Du Feng following behind.

The cave wasn't deep; it only took about twenty steps to reach the end.

However, at the end of the cave, there was a completely different world—a space opened up on both the left and right sides, each space being thirty or forty square meters.

A space of thirty or forty square meters is not large, but it is not small either. After all, the gold produced here is transported away in batches every now and then and will not be stored here for too long, so the place to store the gold does not need to be too big.

After entering, Crown Prince Xiao Jingye, Leng Rongyue, and Xiao Jingyu only glanced around before turning their attention away.

One side of the space was empty, while the other side contained only about twenty large boxes.

After opening and inspecting them one by one, only four boxes contained gold bricks, but none of them were full; the rest were empty.

Crown Prince Xiao Jingye and his companions then separated to carefully examine the stone walls inside the cave...

After confirming that there was no hiding place, the group exchanged glances.

"Let's go outside!"

Leng Rongyue said.

Crown Prince Xiao Jingye and Xiao Jingyu nodded, and the group walked out together.

In the instant she turned around, Leng Rongyue also stored the four boxes of gold into her spatial storage.

After Du Feng relocked the large padlock on the cave entrance, he handed the key to Xiao Jingyu.

When Crown Prince Xiao Jingye and his companions returned to the outside of the stone house courtyard, they saw Xun Zheng leading several people walking towards them, carrying several small cloth bags in their hands.

Xun Zheng and his companions approached and bowed. Xun Zheng stepped forward and reported, "Your Highness, Your Highness Prince Yu, Princess, I led men to search the residences of the guards and found nearly two thousand taels of gold hidden away. It's all here!"

He then pointed to the small cloth bags in the hands of the people behind him.

Crown Prince Xiao Jingye looked at the few small cloth bags, thought for a moment, and nodded, "How about this, when the laborers here have eaten their fill and leave, we will distribute this gold along with the stored grain to them to take back as a means of settling down and compensation."

And those laborers who can never go back... give them double the rice and gold, and make sure to comfort their families!

As for the hatred they felt for being forced to separate from their loved ones, or even losing them... now is the time for revenge!

"Yes!

"Your Majesty... Your Majesty obeys!"

Xun Zheng responded, his voice heavy with emotion.

Thinking about it... how could it not feel heavy?

Not to mention that he was a perfectly good military commander, but just because he refused to collude with the rebels, he was falsely accused of impersonation and sent to this privately mined gold mine to work as a laborer.

Even if I am wronged and suffer greatly, at least I am still alive, and I have lived to see the light of day again.

And what about those laborers who lost their lives here? They will never be able to go home again, never see their loved ones again, and their families will never see their loved ones again!

Leng Rongyue found the earliest and most complete roster in Feng Jiu's stone house. It recorded when all the laborers were captured, their registered residence, their names, and also recorded some of the people who died along the way.

Leng Rongyue handed the roster to Xun Zheng, who then led his men to calculate and distribute the gold and rice according to the roster.

Soon, the porridge was ready. Leng Rongyue went over and said that while the porridge was cooling down, the laborers should pack up their things and leave as soon as they were full.

The laborers, though envious of the large pots of white rice porridge, couldn't disobey Leng Rongyue's words. Leng Rongyue was their savior, and they had no choice but to listen to her.

Secondly, the porridge was freshly cooked and too hot to drink.

So the laborers jogged back to the thatched hut to gather their personal belongings.

Leng Rongyue stirred the cooked porridge and added some spiritual spring water to each pot to help the laborers recover their strength as quickly as possible.

By the time the laborers timidly gathered back around the porridge pot with their meager belongings, the porridge had cooled down enough to be eaten.

Those laborers who hadn't had a full meal for days finally got to drink some thin porridge that could truly be called food!

With Leng Rongyue and Xiao Jingyu watching over them, reminding them not to eat too fast or too much, the laborers managed to slow down their eating as much as possible and avoid any problems caused by overeating.

Xun Zheng and the others took a break from their busy schedules to drink a bowl of porridge, which restored some of their strength. Then they resumed their work of distributing rice and gold.

The laborers never imagined that today, they would not only survive and leave this place, but also receive gold and rice to take back to support their families.

The laborers, clutching their allotted gold and rice, all knelt on the ground and kowtowed to thank Crown Prince Xiao Jingye, Leng Rongyue, and Xiao Jingyu.

"Alright, fellow villagers, please rise!"

We should leave here!

We've all escaped death today!

Now that they are returning home with gold and rice, it is hoped that everyone will cherish the precious time spent with their families and live a good life from now on.

Please forgive me for saying something unpleasant, but if anyone thinks that having gold means they can indulge in drinking, gambling, and whoring...

Commander Xun!

Crown Prince Xiao Jingye's eyes suddenly sharpened as he surveyed the group of laborers below, then turned to Xun Zheng standing to the side, saying, "Commander Xun, please take charge of leading a few unscheduled follow-up visits later."

If anyone fails to use their gold and rice for their home and family, but instead squanders it on eating, drinking, gambling, and whoring… arrest them, throw them in jail, and then send them to a desolate land to do hard labor, never to return home again!